What For?
by iExpress
Summary: Noah crashed into the island and began the slaughter he wanted. Right? AU
Noah was rushing toward the island at a relentless speed. The fish-men and humans alike stared in horror at the incoming giant, unable to even move, frozen with panic. In a few more seconds, the boat would crush into the island, killing off everyone.

The young Pirate King-to-be shouted, running toward Shirahoshi. Upon hearing his instructions, his nakama rushed over the endangered princess. These were the last things Vander Decken saw as the ship got inevitably closer to the island.

The madman broke into an ecstatic, euphoric laughter as the ship slammed into the plaza beneath him with force then surprised even him. The bubble surrounding the island suddenly burst with a deafening, violent sound and water swept everyone and everything away. His feet were swept off the floor as the water hit him and carried him around like a puppet. Then the mast of the ship suddenly hit the back of his head and he never saw the massacre ensuing as Noah slaughtered the population of the fish island.

* * *

It was impossible for to say whether hours or days had passed - or even seconds – by the time Vander Decken came to. With a grunt and a crazy grin still plastered all over his face, he sat up. Two of his legs hurt immensely, one of them bent in a strange angle, the other merely twisted in the ankle. It was nothing, he thought as he made a few awkward steps. He still had two healthy legs to walk on. He was lucky his coating held on, though. Noah was his weapon and protector. Symbolic, he thought.

He was thrown into one of the cabins of the ship. The furniture was everywhere, broken and useless. Pieces of fabric and small clouds of sea dust were partially obscuring the view. He cut his hands heavily on the shattered glass and the blood decorated the water with tiny, wisp-like streams of red. The whole ship was flipped over so that the door was above him. He painfully and slowly climbed his way out into the open.

The island was no more. Everything that used to be Fishman Island now lied on the bottom of the impossibly deep sea in a colorful arrangement of death, with Noah sitting on top of the city ruble like an ominous conqueror. Vander Decken's revenge had been exacted and he stood, ecstatic and mad, observing the palace of King Neptune, the only place that remained unchanged, lingering above him in solitude. The Palace stood tall and proud but empty and surrounded with death, ruling the now lifeless country that lay below it and Vander Decken's eyes once more descended into the abyss below...

A corpse of a woman rose exactly in front of him, a stretch of a hand away. Her eyes were open, staring emptily into his own. Her tail was badly wounded and still bleeding. Her hands, frozen in an eternal, deadly clutch, held onto a small child. The toddler was bleeding as badly as her, yet still barely conscious, moving ever so slightly in its futile attempt to survive, twitching as the last of its breaths faded. The detail of their injuries, the pain in their faces, he observed them in that one short moment before the corpse of a woman ascended. As she disappeared from his sight, he watched in horror as many more bodies floated up towards the palace slowly and surely, leaving the rubble beneath.

Hundreds and hundreds of dead rose from their resting place and flew ungracefully, reddening the sea with blood and bumping into each other disgustingly, like disoriented fish and floated upwards towards the palace, towards the only remnant of what was once ruled their home.

Vander Decken's eyes descended down and he observed the countless bodies he could now see, stuck beneath the stones and debris of their land. Thousands of men, women and children, all killed by Noah, led by his own cruel hand...

He slipped the crimson glow off and threw a small rock into the water with the hand he hadn't washed in ten years. The rock at first fell slowly and without any indication ... then it suddenly sped downward and hit one of the heavy stones on top of the rubble, right beneath him.

Vander Decken jumped down swiftly and hastily started removing the rocks and injured corpses from the pile, panting as he did, his heart all but bursting with pain like it never did before, the sort of pain he didn't know.

And then one of the heavy rocks finally revealed the once smooth and flawless skin. Vander Decken kept going at it when the huge body beneath him suddenly twitched, likely in pain, as it was followed by a small cry. Princess Shirahoshi rose her big dust-covered arm and pushed the remaining pieces of stone of her face but that action alone brought her to tears.

She opened her eyes and found herself looking up at the eyes she hadn't seen before – eyes staring back not in an unusual manner – not with manic adoration or insufferable sadness but with fear and shock and sorrow she had never seen in those devil's eyes before. She would see everything he would never get to tell her in those two, once empty, horrified black eyes.

And before Vander Decken could find the strength to say anything at all, he could hear Shirahoshi uttering her last words:

"… V-Vander… Deck-en …, "

She breathed in deeply, what she knew would be her last breath and the water surged through her, it's coldness washing away the pain as the consciousness started to slip away.

"I f-or-g-give… you…"

Like in a dream, she gave him the only sincere smile he would ever receive and yet he was unworthy, he knew he was unworthy and he observed as Shirahoshi died in pain before his eyes, the small, painful smile full of acceptance remaining on her face in memory of better times.

Moments, long as eternity, passed without a count. The madman tore his gaze away from the dead Princess and ran, away from the slaughter he caused and away from the woman he once believed he loved. He didn't care about his ankle and that pain surging from it, nor his broken leg that would already stop many men in their tracks. He couldn't notice that pain, because the grief in his heart caused him pain he didn't know before – and it was pain stronger than any blow or attack he had ever received.

 _Why? Why? Why, why, why?_

He ran away from the light of the palace, tiny shadows of the ascending people still reaching his eyes.

 _This was not how it… what was supposed to… I think…_

The light was still reaching him and he hated it. He skipped over the pile of dead children's bodies. One of them was still miraculously alive but dying. It cried. He ran faster.

 _She, she loved me, I know, I know. I know?_

He ran towards the darkness in the depths of ocean, where terrible things lurked.

 _Why, why, why forgive…? She was supposed to be sorry, she was supposed to be sorry for never loving me… I think._

The lights faded away and Vander Decken stopped, breath painful in his lungs, legs aching, eyes bulging.

What was it all for?

"She was supposed to tell me she loved me." The fishman answered his own question.

Had he ever loved her truly? He's been asking that himself all this time. Since the day he first felt his heart race, since the plan hatched, since he first started working on his scheme, he had wondered. Was it love, obsession, passion? Was it just business? Was it something he was even capable of feeling?

If she had only said… if she were only able to tell him she loved him, even if she lied, he would know, he knew he would. He wouldn't have to suffer anymore. He would be able to move on, or accept, or rage, or forgive.

But she never did and she always did the only thing she knew; she ran.

She died with fear and forgiveness in her heart and one final time left Vander Decken asking himself:

Did I love her?

He would never know.

The former captain of the Flying Dutchman grabbed hold of his crimson glove and pulled.

The hand that had carried the touch of Shirahoshi for years trembled.

With his other hand he pulled out a knife.

Vander Decken looked back into the distance, where the palace stood engulfed in light, welcoming the souls of the dead.

He would never join them… but then again…

He was a pirate for a reason, wasn't he?

One wild slash through the air and the bubble burst. Decken felt water flow around him and his body paralyzing. The hand that carried Shirahoshi's touch, warm all these years, had suddenly grown cold.

He didn't want to die with a part of her still lingering on him.

The trembling hand took hold of the knife, the first object it touched in a long time and again slashed through the air. Crimson laces colored the water and the big things that lurked shifted in the shadows, intrigued.

Vander Decken died as his blood and tears mixed with the body of water that brought him the Devil's Fruit, his eyes fixated on the palace the place of light he never belonged to and never will.

He died a villain and a criminal.

He died a madman.

 _At the very least_ , he had thought with the last of consciousness, _at the very least_ , _it is you who needs to forgive me… Shirahoshi…_


End file.
